The
IFPI, RIAA, MPAA, and their international allies have led a crusade
against copyright infringement over the last decade, which has
seen record
million dollar verdicts handed down against citizens for
essentially petty theft. Now, even as they continue
their lawsuits, they eagerly await gaining new sets of
legislated tools thanks to the lobbyist money they've been pouring
into governments worldwide.

We previously detailed
how the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, set to be debated by the
U.S. Congress later this year, currently contains a new crime called
"imminent infringement", which is essentially
copyright thoughtcrime.

Now courts in the Netherlands have
added speechcrime to that list, essentially ruling that is illegal to
even talk or write about piracy. The case began last year when
Dutch movie studio Eyeworks sued a Usenet community FTD for "making
public" their film Komt
een vrouw bij de dokter (A
Woman At The Doctor).

Typically "making public"
means you uploaded a file and shared it. In some cases, the
definition has been extended to posting links to infringed material.
However, in this case FTD's users neither posted copyrighted material
nor links to it, they merely would "spot" locations of
various films on Usenet and post them to the group (sans-links).

In
May, in Dutch Federal court in the Hague FTD was handed a defeat.
The court issued an "ex parte injunction" banning the
site's users from "spotting" under threat of
punishment.

The FTD's lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet filed an
objection (appeal) to the court order. That objection was heard
last week and FTD lost yet again when Dutch court essentially ruled a
second time that free speech did not cover talking about or writing
about piracy.

Speaking
withTorrentFreak Engelfriet
voiced his frustration, stating, "I am flabbergasted by the
court’s reasoning. It is established case law that publishing
hyperlinks or torrents (Mininova, Pirate Bay) is *not* the same as a
publication. FTD does less than
what Mininova or Pirate Bay does, but according to the court we are
more liable than they are?"

The Judge supported his
decision citing a case in England involving a Usenet service called
Newzbin. Engelfriet describes, "They say that FTD is doing
the same thing, and since the English courts held Newzbin liable for
infringement, FTD must be liable too. This completely ignores
the technical differences between Newzbin and FTD. Newzbin is an NZB
search engine through which you find codes to directly download from
Usenet. FTD is a forum where people ’spot’ movies using messages
in ordinary Dutch."

The FTD's unsuccessful defense was
that it did not control the servers the material was hosted on and
hand no control over potential downloaders and thus was not "making
available". The court said this was inconsequential and
that guilt would be determined by establishing "whether the
behavior of FTD allows users to download copyrighted files (in an
easier manner) and thus makes such files available to the public."
And the court found they did.

Tim Kuik, director of Dutch
copyright protection group BREIN cheered the decision, stating, "This
is a collaboration between FTD and its users where they knowingly
provide access to unauthorized files. It’s clear that this is
more than just talking about files like FTD wants people to
believe."

Brein is suing the FTD in a second court case.
That case will go to court in October. Kuik wants to see FTD
shut down entirely and taken off the internet.

FTD may soon
have a bit of vengeance, though. Dutch elections are this week,
and due to decisions like this one and the Sweden's multi-million
dollar verdict against the owners of The
Pirate Bay,
the Pirate Party is picking up steam. Writes a
party spokesperson, "When reaching landmark decisions that
overturn years of jurisprudence, neither the judge nor the issue is
served when it turns out that the judge in question is in business
with the copyright-lawyer from the party benefiting from this
shocking verdict. The fact that this joint enterprise mainly offers
courses on 'counter-piracy' at €900 per day, makes the situation
appear even muddier still. If the Netherlands wants to avoid looking
like a banana-republic where the law is for sale to the highest
bidder, it is urgent that parliament takes control of the debate on
copyright-reform, and brings it back into the public arena where this
discussion belongs."

It has been established that the
judge serving on The
Pirate Bay case
was a member
of copyright organizations and may have financially
benefited from the decision. The
Pirate Bay admins
are currently appealing
the case, hoping for a more unbiased day in court. Despite
the seemingly liberal nature of the Netherlands it has been leading
the way in copyright enforcement, banningThe
Pirate Bay and
other sites entirely.

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<political rant>Expect the infringements upon free speech to get worse. The globalists are not happy that the world is awake to their one world government plans, that their scam of climate change has become greatly weakened, and that the Euro is crashing too hard and too soon. The only thing left to do is take people's free speech away, and go to war.

I know... It seems like a leap, but I just see this as one small part to a much greater publicly announced plan. Look at the constant attacks on free speech (and especially the web) around the world. Can't have us slaves talking about things that matter and freely sharing information now can we?</political rant>

Bummer for these guys... Especially since the judge cited law in ANOTHER country!

Closed platforms will end wide-spread hacking, too. Discussing hacking and sharing hacking tools will not be allowed on them.

Nothing can stop private hacking or file sharing, but the damage that those do is insignificant. It's only wide-spread, public hacking and file sharing that need to be stopped, and closing all open platforms easily accomplishes that.

Hell, you can make your own platform. They can close them up and we can/will make new open ones. You can't stop freedom. Ever. You can screw with it, but you can't stop it permanently. People will eventually rise up if the costs are too high.

when was that last time ANY locked, closed, restricted, tie-activated, younameit commercial software was not hacked wide open. i'd be interested to know if there is one, i doubt it.

it's been how many years and we havn't even managed to stomp out flesh and blood real pirates, they still run up and down the water taking boats and recieving huge ransoms, and they think they are going to be able to control everyone on the earth? hehehe, amusing, very amusing

Pretty much anything tied to a server, as long as you don't hack the server, is locked.Examples include xbox live, your cable box, the apple app store, etc. You'd have to hack the provider's servers for that.

That will only happen if there is censorship of the internet. And that infringes on our human rights. "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." - Article 19 of the UDHR. This article guarantees freedom of expression. By your logic, reader1, you're agreeing to violate human rights by censoring the internet. "Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein." - Article 30 of the UDHR. Unfortunately, you can't take away human rights from people, especially in first world countries. However, there is this thing called electronic civil disobedience. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin. The people who have decided not to let their human rights be taken away have turned to electronic civil disobedience. "Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.…The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip." - Ronald Reagan. The ease of information transmission due to the internet doesn't allow the repression of minority views - proxy servers can bypass internet censorship in China. Because of proxy servers - closed platforms will never completely (my definition is 100% market share) take over. There will always be a free, open alternative. There will always be file sharing networks.

Kurz, you nailed it. It sounds too simple, but many of our problems can be traced back to central bankers, and their horrible lust for greed/power.

"The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson

Wiz220... I don't have the hours it would take to educate you, but truly, you should get informed. This isn't tin hat crap. I can back everything up with main stream articles publications, etc... Here's just one example... The US military would DEFINITELY consider killing its own people to accomplish an agenda: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662&page=1

It took me about 15 seconds to dig that up. My friend, the world is not what you think it is. It's not that hard to see anymore. I encourage you to dig in a little, and stop being afraid of the truth (as many people are).

Modern "Liberalism" (renamed from progressivism) is just fascism with a smiley face. The elitists want to control all aspects of your life from cradle to grave, hence the push for government health care, gun control, food control, media and internet control, etc.

As far as the dutch are concerned, they have already shown their contempt for free speech when they put Geert Wilders on trial for quoting the speeches of belligerent imams in that country.

Please educate yourself more on fascism, classical liberalism, modern liberalism, social liberalism, US progressivism, the history of universal healthcare and the policy and ideal behind it, as well as the ideology behind controlling "guns, food, media and internet" more if you want to continue to make statements about them cause right now youre just wordbuzzing fallacies.